A follow-up on my tale of two operator app stores from a couple of weeks back:

Operator A has clarified (in an email to many developers) that when they said apps had been "published" they actually meant that the apps had been approved for sale, and were waiting for an individual country manager to select and launch them.

My take on this is that Operator A has managed to combine the worst of the old "operator portals" and the new app stores: an approval process for apps which is opaque, followed by an manual curation process with little external visibility. I would expect this to deliver the same level success that operator portals have delivered over the last 10 years.

Operator B, in the meantime, have contacted me directly by a couple of routes (one direct, one indirect) and, in between facepalming themselves, advised me to upload the app by an alternative site. I'll be doing this in time and will write up what I learn here.